The Sun does mysterious things

[magicquartz]

On may 10, 2012, the Northeast experienced a wide spread disruption of service. As I poked around the mall with my friend, I popped into the AT&T store and casually asked of they knew anything about the disturbances . They didn't. But then it dawned on me, Solar flares. This is the eleventh year of the solar cycle and this is the time when massive projections from the sun are going to covet our planet, causing wide spread disruption to all digital services including wireless numbers. What happens during one of these flares, is that a field of electromagnetic energy touches our planet which causes outages and wide spread disruption. Best website to look this up is on NOAA . But if something seems to be offline, blame it on the sun, not the AT&T techs, they had nothing to do with what Nature is the culprit of. And by the way, happy reading.^^

[Dcookie ACE - Expert]

Very interesting..and I have read about solar flares disrupting cell service. A friend of mine was just saying that the area he was in the other day had a problem with service, I wonder is this was the reason??

[chrisjbritt]

I remember this... all too well. As a pilot it was a scary time.

Some friends of mine are pilots up in Alaska and this happens quite frequently. In addition to weather reports, they check radiation and solar flare activity. It's VERY frustrating because you loose ALL radio communication (VHF/UHF/CELL/GPS/RADAR)... While on approach 10 miles out ATC (air traffic control) can sometimes see you with your transponder during one of these storms and maybe you can hear them over the radio but they cannot hear you and you need ATC approval before you can deviate from your flight plan so sometimes it's very dangerous...especially if you are considering aborting your flight plan or landing. With GPS out and RADAR out, you can't even see other plans above/below/around you... Happens often in Alaska and is only a preview of what is to come in the lower 48 soon...